Tuesday
A long day and lots of sack time. My nerves have relaxed a great deal. Food is good here. Our pilots flew to Guadalcanal and brought back eight bottles of beer for each man in the combat outfit. All men have been drinking it with hilarity. Poker games have been going for the past several days.
The allies in Europe have cut off Cherbourg Peninsula1.
No more news as to our transfer to Stirling, the “H” planes and 100th Squadron.
Stayed in the sack wrote letters. June 20th, nothing of great import occurred. I am still awaiting a move or a rest leave.
We are progressing favorably at Saipan. In the next 30 days we’ll see a hell of a lot of fighting. See if I’m not correct in this assumption.
Notes & Commentary
1 American infantry units reached the west coast of the Cotentin Peninsula on 18 June. The Germans, though, had thoroughly wrecked the Port of Cherbourg. Battle of Cherbourg. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cherbourg : accessed 18 June 2014).
The American forces found large caches of V-1 flying bombs within the Cotentin Peninsula as well as V-2 rocket launch facilities. Zaloga, Steven J. and Hugh Johnson. German V-Weapon Sites 1943-45. London: Osprey Publishing, 2008. pp. 21-24.
Wayne's Journal 
425 Alouette Squadron veterans I have met have in their logbooks those missions where they bombed V-1 sites.
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I am sure they did the same thing. The veteran I have been meeting since 2010 more than 10 times, the one who told me all about the other veteran and his book, never told me once such stories. He was not a drinker nor a gambler. I will have to ask him about what others did. What I know was that the pilot kept to himself and visited museums. He never asked how things were going with the rest of the crew… How they were? Talk about home… these sorts of things. He would fly the plane and that was it. Just like a bus driver would do. Strange. That must have been his way to deal with the war.
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